Memories
by Neo the Saiyan angel
Summary: Drakken and Shego make preparations. Takes place during chapter 8 of 'S Plus D Equals K'.


Shego tapped her fingers restlessly against the metal rails of her sunchair.

Waiting. She _hated_ it. Especially when it was about something so important.

It wasn't up to _her_ to finish everything up. No, she'd done her part. Securing the parts Drakken would need for his creations below the radar, trying her best to keep Princess from catching wind of any of it.

Her stomach twisted at that thought. Her precious little girl, her princess, was fully grown. Shego had missed _everything_. Her first step. Her first word. First day of school. Meeting her now best friend…

If there was a way to turn back time, to redo everything, she would have taken it without hesitation. No matter what she would've had to do, say, promise, she would've done it. Save Drew. Save Kimmie. Save their little family, protect those little pieces from harm.

But she couldn't. Drakken had gone on a rant just the year before on how messy trying to time travel got. Said it'd probably take some hoaky magic crap to actually work.

...it was all _his_ fault. Shego had to keep her cool to keep from lighting her hands up and wrecking her chair as she flashed back to everything. That day, in that room with Drew and Gemini… Psychotic little snake, standing there screaming a demand that couldn't be met. It was obvious he was getting off on it all.

Her stomach flopped again, this time at remembering the look on her husband's face. The complete and utter _fear_. The blood soaking his clothes, streaming down his cheeks to his neck, sticking to his then-limp hair…

She shook her head to clear out the memory. It wouldn't do any good to dwell on it. All it did was feed a fire that was already hot enough to melt steel. Shego would get her chance. Confront that monster and make him _pay_. Unload the hurt, the anger, the _utter rage_.

She couldn't get Cupcake back. There was barely a sliver of a chance that the heroine would even want to _associate_ with the two of them. Supervillains that had tried time and again to destroy her, her family, the world… If it were Shego, she would barely give them the courtesy of saying 'hi' when walking down the street.

They would never be welcome in her life.

Shego's mood soured incredibly at the thought.

She couldn't keep mulling over everything like this. It wasn't healthy, wasn't productive, and it just made her _even angrier_. Suntanning wasn't working. ...maybe she should bother her doc. Get an ETA, harass him about his stupid ideas, and just, in general, hang around with him. He was probably lonely, anyway.

She normally didn't isolate herself like this. She'd dragged her sunchair into her room and shut the door the week before, after she had secured all of the bits and pieces Drakken had needed to do his work, forbidding him from daring to bother her. She needed the time to decompress, reconcile all of the stolen memories with everything else that she was.

It had been hard. Piecing herself together by ragged edges was _not_ fun. It was almost a relief to her that the same thing hadn't happened to Drew. He wasn't very stable at the best of times, and adding in everything that was stolen from him along with the torture…

She had, of course, managed it. It would've been ridiculous if she _hadn't_. Shego was the best, even when she was off her game. And it wasn't like it was anything _too_ bad. Mostly just school junk and her life with Drew.

Shego closed her eyes at the thought. Her life with her husband. It hadn't been ideal - far from it - but it had been… She'd felt safe. Happy. Even with their bickering, maybe even partly _because_ of it, and his temper tantrums that matched up with his daughter's, Shego had _liked_ her life. She'd been looking forward to being the breadwinner, rubbing Drew's nose into it a bit as he did all the housework and the dirty work of raising a baby. Seeing her little girl grow up. Eventually bringing her brothers in on it, showing that she knew what she was doing. The memories she had were great.

But that's all they were: memories. It was time to face the current reality.

Shego got up from her chair and stretched. Deciding to be a bit lazy, all she did before leaving her room was toss on her catsuit and brush her hair.

It didn't take too long to find Drakken. As expected, he was in his lab working on some equipment or another for their plan. He was hunched over his desk, a screwdriver at work while he whistled a tune of some kind.

She swallowed.

It hurt to look at him. Her Drew… Now Drakken. A supervillain. The somewhat naive and always optimistic Drew had been replaced with a grumpy mood-swinging maniac. How much was whatever mutations Gemini had forced on him versus the torture she wasn't sure. Again, she was reminded of everything that she had lost _because of him_.

Drakken jerked up and looked over his shoulder at her, dropping his piece of machinery. A nervous cringing twitch went across his face as he said, "Oh! Shego! Hello!" His eyes flashed to her hands and back up to her face. "You look, erm, tan?"

She wasn't sure why he was so jumpy until she realized her hands were alight and a scowl was plastered on her face. An embarrassed titter nearly escaped her throat at having lost track of herself. Instead, she shook her head and put her hands out.

"Sorry about that." Shego carelessly shrugged. "Just imagining the _fun_ we're going to have with Gemini."

He let out the breath he'd apparently been holding. "Oh! Okay. Good!" She lifted an eyebrow, to which he stuttered in explanation, "I mean good as in you aren't upset with _me_. Not that the situation is good. Because it isn't."

"So, Big Boss Man…" She shoved all the sarcasm she had into those words. Drakken gave her an A+ glare and grunted in offense to her mockery, but wisely kept his mouth shut so she could finish her thought. "...how're things looking?"

He brightened up at her interest. "Glad you asked!" One of his vines deposited the little doohickey he'd been working on back into his hands. "I've been working on the last little piece of the puzzle for our attack." Drakken held the metal box up in the air and took a big breath. "Behold! The Axiomatic Directory!" Pausing for dramatic effect, he continued, "With _this_ baby, we'll be able to keep my inventions, especially the Bebes, under my control!" He pet the top of his machine and giggled. "It overrides the sentient circuitry that I put into them. They'll be completely obedient to my commands! As long as they can hear me, they'll obey."

Shego stared, wondering how someone could be so dense. "Why don't you just, I don't know, _not_ put those circuits into your hunks of junk?"

"They aren't junk!" he snapped. Then he looked away. "And, erm, removing the circuits would require redesigning them. It was a core part of their construction. I figured it'd be easier to just override the circuits than redoing them from the ground up."

She sighed and rolled her eyes. Again Drakken was cutting corners. Shego could think of a half-dozen ways this could blow up in their faces. He'd blathered at her the last time he tried to build his little doll collection for revenge. Threatening him and trying to take a slice out of his hide.

...but with the mission they were going on, it didn't matter if they went nutso. In fact, it might even be beneficial. Cause even more chaos and burn Gemini's organization to the ground.

"Were we happy?"

The sudden question and the tone that went with it caught her off-guard. She looked back over at him. The concentrated serious look was almost foreign on his face.

He repeated, "Were we happy? With our lives? Being together? Everything?"

Shego's expression softened. What could she say to that? She couldn't snark her way out of it. It would just be disrespectful to her Drew.

"Yeah," she said simply. "We were."

Drakken let out a breath, slow and deliberate.

"I wish you could remember…" She couldn't keep the longing out of her voice. It was _almost_ embarrassing, until she thought of what she'd lost.

He looked at her. Her breath hitched in her throat as she saw a sparkle there, one she didn't ever remember seeing in Drakken's eyes. Cautious curiosity and warmth, directed at her. It was familiar to her all the same, having seen it on Drew's face anytime he looked at her.

It made her…

Shego smiled, a warm welcoming smile. His eyes crinkled with worry at that. As he shifted uncomfortably at her look, she took the few extra steps and bent over to be face-to-face with him.

She gave him a kiss. One Drakken may not be familiar with, but Drew would have known straight away. Then he would've followed up in his rough rumbly voice that she loved so much...

She could teach him again. Shego knew him inside and out. It was only fair to her for him to brush up on how she ticked. She wasn't worried; he was a quick learner when he cared.

He was still her doc. Just a little different.


End file.
